India v Pakistan - Never a dead rubber

I had just come out of the Oval satisfied at having spent a good day at cricket. The Indians had handed the West Indians a pasting and Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma had lit up an otherwise gloomy London afternoon. I needed to head back to Oxford and hence was in a rush. Evening traffic in Central London can be a real nightmare and the attempt was to get out of Central London as soon as possible. Just as I was about to enter the Oval station did someone call me from behind. And the call was "bhai jaan". I turned around to see Nasir (I don't know his surname), an ardent cricket fan and Pakistan supporter, smiling at me. I have bumped into Nasir at several cricket grounds around the UK and know him to be a passionate supporter of the game. "Ab to apna team haar gaya hai. Aap ka team bahut achha khel raha hai. India ko support karenge abhi, (Our team has lost now while your team is playing really well. I will support India from now on)" quipped Nasir. I returned the smile and said to him that I'd see him in Birmingham come Saturday.

The Nasir incident wasn't a one off. Soon after I went down for breakfast at the Oxford University Club on 12th morning did my friend Samantha, the Assistant Manager, inform me that the India-Pakistan Society will be watching the match at the club. There will be 60-80 members of the Oxford University, Indians and Pakistanis, who will be watching the game together. They have made plans to have breakfast together and then enjoy the action. "They really enjoy their cricket and shout and scream and do all sorts of things. In fact, at times they become really excited and animated," laughed Samantha.

These ground realities are far removed from the following descriptions on India-Pakistan cricket highlighted by Shashi Tharoor and Shahryar Khan in their book, Shadows Across the Playing Field. Tharoor writes, "Sadly, many Pakistanis looked at cricket with India entirely from a communal perspective." He drives his point home while commenting on the abject Pakistani surrender in India in 1979-80 under skipper Asif Iqbal, "The tour put paid to the career of Pakistani captain Asif Iqbal. He had lost a great deal of weight, began taking tranquillizers and decided he could not handle the strain, announcing his retirement as soon as he got home. Carrying Pakistan's national pride on one's shoulders at a time of stress is never easy; doing it while losing to India at cricket is impossible."

The acutely politicised nature of India-Pakistani cricket relations, which the book continuously alludes to, was most evident immediately after India's victory on March 1, 2003, in a World Cup tie at Centurion in South Africa. Soon after the match was over, the streets and lanes of Calcutta reverberated with sounds of blowing conches, bursting crackers and chanting of slogans. At Kalighat, the city's most important religious shrine, many were seen waving national flags with pictures of Sachin Tendulkar stuck in the middle of the Ashoka Chakra. Gujarat, on the other hand, witnessed incidents of Muslims being stopped from celebrating. There was rioting, injuries and also a death in Ahmedabad. Violence also erupted in Bangalore. In all these places, prohibitory orders were imposed and security tightened. Reactions of Indian politicians to the victory prove Tharoor's point. Army Chief N.C. Vij congratulated the team for their win over phone. It no longer mattered whether India made it to the Super Six, semis or final.

What these radically differing descriptions allude to is that watching India-Pakistan cricket while living in India or Pakistan and watching India-Pakistan cricket in the diaspora are fundamentally different experiences. In the diaspora it is sport while back home in the sub-continent it is often bordering on war.

And this is one encounter, which often finds takers in world media not otherwise known for their passion for cricket. The passion evoked by the 2004 Indian tour of Pakistan was such that even the world media, uninterested in cricket per se was forced to take notice. Witness Monica Eng in the Chicago Tribune:

"This was the first match in the historic India-Pakistan cricket series, which started last Saturday (Friday night in Chicago) in Karachi, Pakistan, and marked the first time India has ventured into the land of its nuclear rival to challenge Pakistan to their national sport in 15 years. And while it may have caused barely a blip on the radar in this country during March Madness, it's a match that drew an estimated 600 million viewers worldwide, thousands of them from Chicago's Indian and Pakistani communities who gathered in restaurants and homes Friday to watch. ...Rashid Minhas, owner of City Travel & Tours and the party's host, is only one of the many cricket nuts who shelled out $200 to the Dish Network to tune into this ground breaking series. He, like many of Chicago's South Asian community (which numbers about 100,000 Pakistanis and 150,000 Indians, according to community groups), said it was well worth it to witness this cross-border classic, this subcontinental series, this Super Bowler-athon of South Asia. Plus it was a rare opportunity to watch the two neighbors compete in an arena that involves neither bombs nor disputed territories."

All of this history makes me eagerly await Saturday's clash between these two arch rivals. Some are calling the match inconsequential because India has already made the semi-final while Pakistan is out of the competition. Just suffice to say India-Pakistan cricket can never be a dead rubber.